Cricket's PC plods

Ian Wooldridge

Last updated at 00:00 28 February 2001

THE proprietor of this column is a paragon of tolerance.

I only detest ill mannered children, zealots of political correctness, anti- hunt protesters, shortchanging barmen, slovenly shop assistants, a couple of Guardian leader writers, the chap who composed that ghastly signature tune for Neighbours and sportsmen who lose their rag in public.

But hold on a minute. I feel I am going to have to revise my harsh condemnation of that last category of miscreants.

When Robert Croft's return to the dressing room in Sri Lanka coincided with a crash of breaking glass, I have to say my heart went out not only to him but half the England cricket team as well. My rag would have been on fire as well.

I doubt whether a Test match has ever been umpired with such stupendous incompetence. They might just have well have brought in a snake charmer and a bullock cart chauffeur to take charge.

These words will not go down at all well when they are reprinted - as they assuredly will be - in Sri Lankan newspapers. They love the sound of Englishmen squealing.

Well, I'm not squealing about the result. England would almost certainly have been comprehensively beaten even without at least five glaringly bad umpiring decisions going against them.

There is no suggestion, as the saying goes, that the umpires deliberately cheated. The game, after recent scandals, is now too closely scrutinised for that.

But integrity is one thing.

Ignorance of the laws, or the sheer inability to implement them correctly, is altogether another.

By wry coincidence a letter from one of our readers, Mr Mahinda Perera, of Pinner, Middlesex, appeared in yesterday's Daily Mail. We respect our readers and air their views, however controversial. Mr Perera's - a virulent attack on Bob Willis, the former England captain who is now a Sports-mail cricket columnist - was certainly that.

He was 'disgusted' at Willis's assessment of the quality of India subcontinent cricket umpiring and 'appalled' that we should publish his opinions before the Test series in Sri Lanka even started. 'His remarks', he wrote, 'smack of stereotyping and a white supremacy mentality'.

I know Bob Willis well and can assure that if asked to name three of the most outstanding and trusted Test umpires in the world he would immediately come up with Messrs Venkataraghavan, of India, Bucknor of West Indies and Shepherd of England. Two are black. So much for the white supremacy theory.

All three acknowledge that they have made mistakes. It is impossible not to in the furnace heat of modern Test cricket, where batsmen stand their ground when they know full well that they are out and fielders yell frantic leg-before appeals when they are standing 60 yards from the bat at third man.

Where it all went wrong was when the International Cricket Council determined, in line with the aforementioned political correctness, that 'local' umpires should be enrolled. Some local umpires, I feel sure, are very good. The two who stood in the first Test in Sri Lanka were not. They were rubbish.

Big cricket will cascade into anarchy if the hysterical appealing and on-field sledging and indiscipline are allowed to continue.

How can it be stopped?

More influential brains than mine are grappling with the problem at this very moment but one idea may be to canvass the top Test cricketers in the world and ask them to nominate the dozen-or-so of the world's umpires in whom they would have confidence and whose jurisdiction they would respect. At the moment, as we saw in Sri Lanka, it is a sheer lottery.

I have enormous respect for Alec Stewart, who withdrew from one of the most primitive umpiring errors ever seen without a flicker of emotion and even more for Nasser Hussain, whose diplomacy, after another disastrous decision, endorsed him as an exemplary England captain.

I was brought up in a school where merely to have intoned a breath of dissent against an umpire or referee would have earned a solid clip round the ear and an appearance before the official concerned to apologise.

In Sri Lanka, I am ashamed to say, I may well have emulated the reaction of Robert Croft before calling in the glaziers. As a Test match it was a travesty.